A political thriller set in the corrupt and faceless world of international banking kicked off the Berlin film festival yesterday, with a plot which might have been lifted from current newspaper headlines.

The International, starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts, delivers a damning verdict on the workings of high finance under the tagline: "They control your money. They control your government. They control your life. And everybody pays."

Amid current events, critics said the film was an appropriate choice to headline the festival, which has never shied away from political and edgy themes. But the festival chief, Dieter Kosslick, said The International was chosen for the event long before the financial crisis erupted last year. "When we decided to open the festival with Tom Tykwer's financial thriller we did not know that his fiction would soon be overtaken by reality," he said.

Like many of the films being screened this year, The International demonstrated "the brutal effects of unbridled global economic systems which bring hunger, want, war and torture", he said.

It tells the story of a Manhattan lawyer and an Interpol agent's attempts to confront a powerful bank involved in illegal activities, including arms trading and destabilising governments. The plot, which moves from Berlin to Milan, Istanbul and New York and includes gun battles in the Guggenheim museum and on rooftops in front of the Blue Mosque, was inspired by the collapse of the scandal-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International in the 1990s.

Owen, the British actor who plays Interpol agent Louis Salinger alongside Watts as Manhattan assistant district attorney Eleanor Whitman, said: "The big questions in the movie are: do banks use our money appropriately? Can you trust them? Are they corrupt? The questions have been hugely at the forefront in the last six months."

German director Tykwer, who rose to success in 1998 with Run, Lola Run, said: "Our aim was to draw attention to a global problem, and then before we knew it we found ourselves in the midst of an apocalyptic decline of the financial system. It now feels as if the current insanity is brought together in our film."

Other films in the 11-day festival also focus on the flaws of capitalism, including Rage, a murder mystery set in the world of New York fashion, by British director Sally Potter. "It criticises an economy that turns people into things," she said. Michael Winterbottom's The Shock Doctrine exposes how governments and business exploit poorer countries in times of crisis.